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BI-CENTENNIAL 



/ 



Burning of Medfield, 



1676-1876. 



EXERCISES 



BI-CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION 



BURNING OF MEDFIELD BY INDIANS 



KING PHILIP'S WAR, 



February 21, 1876. 










MEDFIELD: 

l'K I NT E I) BY GEORGE II. ELLIS. 
[876. 

RT, 



/> 



NOTE. 



At a late meeting of the citizens, J. B. Hale, George Cummings, and 
James Hewins, Esquires, were chosen a Committee to take suitable 
measures for the publication of the address, poem, and other exercises at 
the Bi-centennial Commemoration of the burning of Medfield by the 
Indians, in King Philip's War. 

This Committee, at their first meeting for consultation respecting the 
object of their appointment, were tendered by Deacon Cummings the 
generous offer to assume the entire expense of the publication in view. 
It is. therefore, to his deep interest in the occasion, and earnest desire to 
transmit a record of it to future generations, and his continual endeavors 
to uphold the honor and promote the permanent welfare of the place of 
his residence, that the citizens are now indebted for the completii 
this work. 

Medfield, June. 1S76. 



PREFACE. 



Among the memorable events of the famous war of King Philip 
against the early settlers of New England, was the attack upon the 
village of Medfield, in February, 1675. It was probably conducted by a 
party of the Nipmucks and Wampanoags, a body of Indians who were 
allied by Philip for the destruction of their common enemy. It was 
prosecuted with all the wile and cruelty of savage warfare, and resulted 
in the burning of a large part of the dwellings in the village, and the 
death of nearly a score of the people. The second Centennial Anniver- 
sary of this event was anticipated by the present inhabitants with great 
interest, and as it would occur on this Centennial year of the nation's 
life, a desire was universally expressed that it might be marked by a 
public celebration. Accordingly, a meeting of the citizens was held early 
in the year for the purpose of taking some action respecting such a cele- 
bration. At this meeting, it was voted that the day should be celebrated 
in a suitable manner. A Committee — consisting of Rev. C. C. Sewall, 
Rev. J. M. R. Eaton, Jacob R. Cushman, Charles Hamant, and James 
Hewins, Esquires, — was chosen to make all necessary arrangements [or 
accomplishing the wishes of the people as indicated by their vote. 

This Committee immediately projected those arrangements which a 
suitable recognition of such an event required. Invitations were extended 
to the authorities and citizens of towns closely allied to our own in former 
and latter years: to members of the State Government: and to many 
individuals connected by various ties with past and present residents of 
the place. Distinguished speakers were solicited to take part in the 
exercises of the day. Preparations were made for appropriate music and 
for every foreseen necessity of the occasion. And on the morning of 
the 21 st of February — a day of unusual brightness and mildness of 
temperature, — the public ceremonies were introduced by ringing of the 
village bells, and the firing of a national salute by a detachment from 
Battery B. of the Massachusetts Artillery, under charge of Captain 
Baxter. A similar salute with ringing of the bells was repeated at noon, 
and the firing of guns, at flftean minutes' interval, was continued through 



the clay. The Town Hall was finely decorated by Beals & Son, of 
Boston. Music was furnished by the Medfield Band. The hour ap- 
pointed for the literary exercises of the occasion was 10:30 A. M. And, 
at this hour, a crowd had assembled which filled the hall to its utmost 
capacity. The exercises consisted of an opening address by Rev. C. C. 
Sewall, President of the day ; prayer by Rev. J. M. R. Eaton ; hymn sung 
by the audience in the familiar tune of "St. Martin's"; address by 
Robert R. Bishop, Esq., a native of Medfield and now a resident of 
Newton; music by the band; and a poem by James Hewins, Esq., a 
citizen of the town. At this point, a recess was taken for a collation in 
the vestry of the Unitarian Church. At 2 p. m. the people reassembled in 
the Town Hall, and the exercises were resumed by singing a beautiful 
hymn written for the occasion by Rev. J. H Allen, of Cambridge. This 
was followed by remarks of invited guests and others in response to 
sentiments offered by the President of the day. These remarks were 
listened to by the audience with unabated interest and gratification until 
the hour of necessary departure had arrived. The meeting was then 
closed with prayer by Rev. A. M. Crane. 

The programme for the day had been carried out with entire success. 
Nothing occurred to interrupt the proceedings, or to mar the general 
pleasure, except a disastrous accident which occurred in the morning as 
many invited guests and other friends were coming from the depot to the 
Town Hall. This accident was a cause of serious, and it was then 
feared of fatal, injuries to several aged gentlemen, who had made 
special effort to be present on the occasion, and whose presence was 
particularly desired. The thought of their disappointment and greater 
sufferings cast a shade of sadness over the proceedings; withdrew many 
persons from the hall, and visibly affected the minds of others who 
remained. With this exception, the day had completely answered the 
hopes and wishes of the people ; and the record of it is now transmitted 
to succeeding generations with the earnest wish, that, in the possession 
of still higher and better advantages than are our own, they may not 
overlook or undervalue the harder fortunes of the early settlers of 
Medfield. 



EXERCISES. 



OPENING ADDRESS BY REV. CHARLES C. SI. \\ All.. PRESIDENT 

OF THE DAY. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Fellow-citizens : — 

In the year 1649, land was granted by the General Court to 
the town of Dedham, for the erection of a new village on her 
western border and beyond the river. This land having been 
laid out by commissioners then appointed, the town, on peti- 
tion to the next General Court, was named Meadfield ; and 
soon a few hardy adventurers, desirous of more room, and of 
a better chance to build their fortunes, forsook the good old 
town once named Contentment, — (a most inviting name, but 
which to them had been, and must ever be, simply Dedham) — 
came to reside upon this beautiful plain, near to the meadows 
of Charles River. But they had scarcely established them- 
selves in comfortable homes, and begun to reap some good 
fruit from their toils, when they were made to realize the dan- 
gers, and to dread the evils to which they were exposed in 
this then frontier settlement. For Philip, that brave and 
sagacious Indian chief, had waged, and was now prosecuting, 
a war of extinction against the white settlers in New Eng- 
land; and on the morning of February 21st, 1675, after 
numerous assaults upon other settlements, he came stealthily 
upon Medfield, and with savage cruelty destroyed the village. 

We are now at the close of the second century from the 
date of that event, and are here assembled to commemorate 



8 

it. But why, it may be said, why commemorate an event 
which occurred at a period so distant from the present ? Why 
do we wish to revive and perpetuate the memory of an event 
so malignant in purpose and so disastrous to the quiet dwell- 
ers here ? Why not let it be forgotten among the irrevocable 
deeds of the past ? We all know that there is implanted in 
the human breast a feeling which has prompted men every- 
where, and in all ages, to perpetuate the history of their 
homes. There is an universal disposition to revive and trans- 
mit the record of the people and the events of former times. 
Sharing this feeling, and prompted by this disposition, the 
citizens of Medfield now wish to revive and perpetuate the 
memory of an event of unparalleled importance in their local 
history, and ruinous to the ancestors of many, whose names 
are most familiar among the present residents of the place. 
It is an event too which bears relation to the early history of 
New England, and affords a striking instance of the perils 
and the sufferings which must have been encountered by the 
primitive settlers of this portion of our country. We deem 
it, then, an event not unworthy of special commemoration on 
this Centennial year of our nation's age. We consider it 
a duty to past and future generations to record and trans- 
mit the record of the names and the experiences of the first 
founders of our village ; and, from the contrast between their 
times and our own, to draw a lesson which, while it is of touch- 
ing interest to ourselves, may be of useful incitement to those 
who will be our successors here. 

It is for these reasons that we devote this day, — the second 
centennial of the event, — to a public commemoration of it. 
And we are most happy to greet with cordial welcome the 
many sons and daughters of Medfield who have returned, this 
day, to their homes, and our invited guests, who honor us with 
their presence, and whose kindly words, we hope, will prove 
to u.s their sympathy and their approval of what we are now 
aiming to do. And, recognizing the good Providence which 
has brought us together this morning under circumstances of 
so much mercy, and in the enjoyment of such superior privi- 
leges of every kind, both as individuals and as a community, I 



invite you all to join, with the whole heart, in praise and 
prayer to Almighty God. 

Prayer was then offered by the Rev. J. M. R. Eaton, after 
which the following hymn, written for the occasion by the 
Rev. C. C. Sew all, was sung by the audience: — 

O Thou, to whom the ages past 

Are as the passing day. 
On whom no change will e'er be cast. 

Though Time all else decay, 

We praise, to-day, thy loving care. 

Which surfers us no more 
The perils and the griefs to share 

< )ur lathers bravely bore. 

Exposed to wrath of savage foe, 

They dwelt in constant fear: 
His step, how stealthy none could know. 

His deadhj shaft how near. 

The homes they left they saw no more ; 

Bereft of all they were. 
That painful toil and love before 

Had garnered for them there. 

But we no warning call now hear 

To bid us flee for life : 
To quit our homes, to us so dear. 

And breast the dreadful strife. 

Lord! write the lesson on each heart, 

That we more grateful be. 
And, while we live, may ne'er depart 

From faithfulness to Thee. 

Thy servants. Lord ! still guard and bless ; 

Confirm our trust in Thee : 
And grant that fruit of righteousness 

< )ur aim and guerdon be. 

The President. — I now have the pleasure to introduce to 
you, as the Orator of the day, a gentleman allied to us, not 
only as a native of the place, but by every consideration hon- 
orable to himself and gratifying to his kindred, and his many 
2 



IO 

friends. I introduce to you Robert R. Bishop, Esq., of 
Newton. 

ORATION BY ROBERT R. BISHOP, ESQ. 

Mr. President : — 

On the morning of the twenty-first of February, 1675, 
corresponding in the new style to this day, this town was 
sleeping under a sense of security and relief. Dwelling for 
nearly a year in the midst of constant alarms and fears, it 
had come into safety and under protection. Since the war 
began its inhabitants had not felt secure until now. Succor, 
succor had come, and the women lay down to rest with 
thankful hearts to God, and the men felt that again their 
homes were safe. 

Consider the exposed condition of Medfield at this time. 
The war began on the 24th of June, at Swansey in the 
Plymouth Colony, and during the early summer was confined 
to that colony, — the towns of Swansey, Taunton, Middle- 
borough, and Dartmouth being attacked. Medfield was the 
outermost town in the Massachusetts Colony against the ene- 
my's country, except Mendon. For a hundred miles southwest- 
ward stretched the land of the savage ; and if you will look 
at any of the old maps of that period — that prefixed to Hub- 
bard's Indian Wars, or that prefixed to Cotton Mather's 
History of the Indian Wars, or those usually accompany- 
ing the old historical books of that time, — you will find that 
our nearest white neighbors in that direction, with the excep- 
tion of Mendon, were the towns of New London and Say- 
brook and Hartford, in the Connecticut Colony. 

On the 14th of July, John Post was killed on the old Sher- 
burne road — how familiar those words sound — in Mendon; 
and since the day when John Winthrop landed at Salem, 
bringing the charter, in 1630, his was the blood of the first 
Englishman shed in the Massachusetts Colony in warfare. 
Afterwards Mendon was deemed untenable, and was evacu- 
ated and abandoned by its inhabitants, and after that the 
empty houses were burned by the Indians. Then Medfield 



1 1 

became the outermost sentinel towards the Indian country in 
this colony. 

After leaving the Plymouth Colony, the war passed to the 
banks of the Connecticut River in the early autumn, and the 
tales of Bloody Brook, — where your own Robert Hinsdale 
with three of his sons were slain, — of Deerfield, and of North- 
field and Hadley, comprise the story of the Indians' ferocity, 
and the white man's endurance and martyrdom there. 

Up to this time — up to September or October — the real 
character of the contest had probably been little understood 
by the whites, and the force and determination of the Indians 
had been underrated. I suppose it is so in all wars. You 
remember that in the early days of the Rebellion, so wise 
and sagacious a statesman as Secretary Seward prophesied 
that the war would not last three months. So I suppose it 
was in the Indian time; that some sagacious adviser of 
Governor Leverett, some Secretary of State — I do not 
know, sir, but it was Oliver Warner, for he has been Secre- 
tary of State until our present administration of Governor 
Rice, so long I believe that the memory of man runneth 
not to the contrary, and we have heard his name on all Fast 
days and Thanksgiving days — "God save the Commonwealth 
of Massachusetts — Oliver Warner," — and I suppose it used 
to be "God save the Colony of Massachusetts Bay — Oliver 
Warner," — prophesied that the affair would be over before 
midsummer. At all events it was not believed in the begin- 
ning that this was a War. 

But when not only a few towns in Plymouth Colonv had 
been attacked, but the conflict had ravaged from the seaboard 
to the mountains, and not only one colony, but Massachusetts 
and Connecticut and Plymouth, and all the towns in all the 
colonies, were menaced, and Philip was about to spend his 
winter in the region of Albany, to incite such also as might 
there be inclined to come against us, the colonists knew that 
it was a War, and prepared themselves accordingly. 

Accordingly the commissioners for the allied colonies of 
Connecticut, Plymouth, and Massachusetts made a levy of a 
thousand troops from Massachusetts, and a proportionate 



12 

number from Plymouth and Connecticut, dividing those from 
Massachusetts into six companies, and putting them under 
the command of well-tried captains, and committing the whole 
"Cheerfully" (as the records of Massachusetts read) to the 
command of His Excellency Governor Winslow of Plymouth, 
— and I am happy to state, Mr. President, upon the authority 
of the newspapers, that he was not the ancestor of our towns- 
man, sir, from Newton, who has lately distinguished himself 
in another way. You remember the first campaign of that 
army. Until about this time it was very doubtful whether 
the Narragansetts would ally themselves or not with Philip. 
But now there was no doubt about it ; and the army, headed 
by Governor Winslow himself, marched to the country of the 
Narragansetts in Rhode Island. You remember the details 
of that memorable march. You remember how the army 
came upon the Indians entrenched in their fortification in the 
midst of a vast morass ; how they were entrenched behind 
their stockade, built with large logs, sharpened and driven 
into the ground; that surrounded by a wall, as the historian 
says, a rod in thickness, and that by a ditch which it seemed 
impossible to cross, except by means of a single log, the only 
apparent means of entrance. You remember how the army 
was led around to another and secret entrance by a friendly 
Indian, and how they entered the fort, the Massachusetts 
troops leading the van, the Plymouth troops following, and 
the Connecticut troops in the rear. You remember the 
details of the slaughter which then took place, — a conflict 
hand to hand and throat to throat ; how as the historian 
tells us seven hundred Indians were killed and one hun- 
dred and fifty whites, and the whites lost six of their lea- 
ders. You remember that then the whites set fire to the 
stockade and the fort, and burned up every vestige of it, 
including the wigwams and huts, and drove the Indians back 
into the Nipmuck country, and this the historian regards as 
the great mistake of the day, because, as you remember, a 
snow-storm coming on immediately, our troops were belea- 
guered in the wilderness, compelled to march through the 
blinding fury of the storm for miles and miles back to the 



*3 

settlements, and thus were unable to pursue the adversary. 
Thus, although this was a victory, it was a barren victory ; 
when, Increase Mather records, if we had been able to pur- 
sue the enemy for twenty-four hours longer, the war would 
have ended. But Providence had decreed otherwise. Ex- 
hausted, worn out, without supplies, the army was compelled 
to fall back; the vanquished Indians also retreated to their 
own country, and for a short time there was a truce. The 
white army re-entered Boston on the 5th of February, 

Until now, Medfield had stood the outermost sentinel 
against the enemy's country, unharmed. The war began on 
the left of us, raged at the right of us, and the great battle of 
the War had been fought in front of us, and still we were un- 
touched. Like a rugged pine clinging to the top of a preci- 
pice when the storm and the hurricane have levelled every 
other tree of the forest, so Medfield stood. But it was not 
difficult to believe that the next onset of the enemy would be 
upon that cordon of towns which surrounded the centre of 
the province, — Lancaster, Marlborough, Sudbury, Medfield. 
Accordingly great alarm was felt in these towns. You re- 
member that the pious minister of one of these towns, Mr. 
Rowlandson, went upon a journey of entreaty to the Governor 
and Council, begging for help for his own town, Lancaster; 
and that as he came back and ascended the hills overlooking 
Lancaster, he beheld the smoke of its dwellings, his own 
house among the number, and saw the havoc of its desolation. 
You remember that his wife was taken captive with her infant 
child, and how, after being compelled by the savages to follow 
their wanderings and marches up and down the country, to 
Wachusett and Northfield, her babe sickened and lingered 
and died, and she was compelled by their order to leave it on 
the spot, without the rites of a Christian burial, and to march 
on; how afterwards she was ransomed and restored at Charles- 
town to her husband and children except the one who died 
upon the journey, and how she recounts the mercy of God in 
her and their preservation. 

This was on the 10th of February. Four days alter that, 
and precisely one week before the event in commemoration of 



14 

which we are brought together, the ever-vigilant and ever-to- 
be-revered first minister of this town, Mr. Wilson, wrote to 
the Governor and Council a letter, which I think you will de- 
sire me to read in your presence. It is this : — 

Honored Srs, — Prostrating my humble service vnto your Hon- 
ors, I had not bin so bold (being so vnfit as I am, ) to send these 
rude lines at present vnto you, while you are so busyed on the 
weighty concernes, and sad occasions respecting the Commonwealth 
and churches of God. But that wh. I haue to write is about the 
same things wch yourselfes, as y e honored fathers of y e country 
are taken vp with, studying night and day to compasse w l is most 
expedient and expeditious for y e good and safety of y e whole. Cap- 
tain Oakes, coming fro Marlbourough to our towne this second 
day night,* we understand by him, (who lately came fro y e grizely 
sight of y e ruines of Lancaster,) of y e imminent clanger y l not 
only Malborough was in wh n he left them, but also of y e towne of 
Medfeild, with y= village of Sherborne on the other syde of y e 
river, y e common enemy (as he understands) bending towards Nip- 
muck, Sherborne also, by his and y e reports of others being threat- 
ened next Thursday. Honored Srs, I write in y e behalf of y e 
towne. It is our humble request that your Honors would consider 
us in this juncture of time. We have not till now, made such a 
motion as this, and could be glad y r were not such an occasion. Our 
towne is a frontier towne. Y e loss of Mendham f hath disadvan- 
taged vs. Y e losse of Medfeild will be a very greate blow ; what 
will become of y e city if the hands of y e country grow feeble. 

Now y e rode from Nipmuck is fair for these caniballs, be pleased 
for God's sake to remember us, and let some considerable sufficient 
force be sent to vs for our speedy releife, before it be to late, by y e 
soonest, by y e soonest that possibly can be, lest Medfeild be turned 
into ashes and y e smoke of it amaze such y l shall behold it ; Oh, let 
not one day passe without preparations herevnto, tho they come in 
y e night. Captin Oakes is not constantly with us, but is in sever- 
all motions fro hence to Marlborough, and thro' some difficultyes he 
meetes with in regard to fodder for horses, w ch is very scarce, would 
be glad your Honors would signify further of your minds w< he 
should do ; and by these meanes we haue no certain helpe at hand. 

*The second day of the week, Monday. 
t Memlmi. 



15 

Not further to trouble your Honors, but hoping your compassion- 
ate hearts will and do consider us, humbly returne our hearty 
thanke'fullinesse and acknowledgemts for your vndeserved favour 
in sending out forces to visit us, and to scout about for discouery of 
our dangers, humbly begging y e continuall assistance of y c Al- 
mighty to be with you in all y r weighty concernes y< ly on yor 
hands, and smiles of y e Lord's divine fauor on his poore distressed 

people. 

So prayes 

Your Honors' humble servant, 

Feb. 14th 75. John Wilson. 

Medfeild. 

The original of that letter, sacred to every son of Mcdfield, 
is in the keeping of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in 
its archives among its State papers, and there may it remain 
forever ! I know not, friends, in what books you read the 
legends of pathos, or find the entreaties of prayer; but for 
myself I know of nothing in the language of entreaty or of 
supplication more calculated to stir the heart, than that letter 
of your first minister. 

The Governor responded. A force, consisting of a com- 
pany of eighty men of infantry, under the command of Capt. 
John Jacob, and a company of horse, about twenty, tinder 
command of Capt. Edward Oakes, was sent for our relief, and 
quartered in the town. These, together with the train-band 
of the town, numbering about one hundred, under command 
of Lieut. Henry Adams, constituted a sufficient force for 
its defence against any enemy which could be anticipated. 
Thus, on the day when Medfield was attacked, it was proba- 
bly better able to repel the attack than at any other period 
of the war; and it was this sense of security, this fatal reli- 
ance upon it, which probably caused the disaster. 

The general appearance of Medfield, its characteristics and 
features at that time were probably more like what they are 
now than those of most towns. Instead of a nearly direct 
highway as now from Dedham, the road turned to the left at 
Walpole corner, and passing through a valley came out near 
the eastern slope of Mount Nebo, at the house of Isaac 



i6 

Chenery, which was situated in what is now a pasture, a few 
rods to the east of the house where Mrs. Coltman resides. 
There it probably divided into two forks, one passing around 
on the eastern side of Mount Nebo, and coming out near the 
house of Samuel Bullen, which was a few rods in the rear of 
the residence of the late Mr. Daniels Hamant, running across 
the present south road and entering the village through what 
is now Pleasant Street. It then continued northward, substan- 
tially over the present line of North Street, passing the house 
of Capt. Sadey, afterwards Barrachias Mason's, afterwards 
Johnson Mason's, and now in the possession and about to be- 
come the residence of your citizen, Mr. John J. Adams ; and 
then continued northwardly toward the settlement at Sher- 
burne and the Nipmuck country, past the house now in the 
ownership of Mr. Lorenzo Harding. The other fork of the 
road from Dedham probably came across to the house of 
Samuel Morse, which was near the present residence of 
Misses Lucy and Mary Morse, and continued in very much 
the same direction as the present main street, through the vil- 
lage, but turned to the right before reaching the river, which 
it crossed about half way between the present turnpike bridge 
and Brastow's bridge. The site of the bridge as it then 
existed is marked by large rocks, I believe, on either side, 
now remaining. There were four garrisons in the town. The 
first was at the house of Isaac Chenery, at the location I have 
mentioned, and the remains of it are still existing and very 
plainly to be discerned. It is a spot of interest, and well 
worth a visit to examine. It is situated upon a knoll or rise 
of land, upon the borders of a large swamp. To be seen at 
the present time are the remains of the stockade, in almost 
the exact form of a horseshoe, and in nearly the middle the 
almost perfectly square cellar of the old house. The corners 
are as plainly to be discerned as any portion. The stockade 
surrounded a place perhaps twice as huge as this hall, and 
was doubtless constructed of pointed timbers driven into the 
ground and supported and backed by an earthwork. 

The second garrison was at the house where Mr. Bradford 
Curtis now lives ; the third at the Capt. Sadey house, now 



i7 

Mr. Adams's; and the fourth at the present residence of Mr. 
Lorenzo Harding. Probably there are no houses now stand- 
ing in the town which were standing on the day when it was 
burned. The venerable Peak House, so justly the subject of 
curiosity and veneration, was probably built some years later 
at another place, and moved to its present spot, though the 
smaller building by its side, which some of you I am sure re- 
member, and which was once used, tradition saws, for a 
weaver's simp, was doubtless standing when the town was 
burned. The two elm-trees in front of Miss Sarah Bos- 
worth's were probably standing at that time, — saplings then; 
how short is our life compared with their lives; how little do 
we know of the history of this town compared with what 
they have witnessed. ( )n the spot where we are assembled 
stood the house of the minister, John Wilson. It was proba- 
bly the finest dwelling-house in the town. It had an over- 
hanging second story for protection against the Indians, or 
for fashion's sake, as the custom then was, — it matters little 
which. Across North Street, the first house was that of 
Ralph Wheelock, the first signer of the compact to remove to 
Mediield, and the founder par excellence of the town, some of 
whose representatives I am glad are present with us to-daw 
Robert Hinsdale's house was across the brook where vour 
estimable citizen, Mr. Cummings, now lives; and the well 
dug by Hinsdale I believe is still in existence upon the estate 
At first all buildings upon the main road in the centre of the 
town for some reason, of the nature of which I am ignorant, 
were erected upon the north side, and none upon the south 
side. The large tract of plain land to the southward was de- 
voted to cultivation without dwellings, and so remained for a 
considerable period later. The first house built upon the 
south side was that of Richard Mann many years later, which 
stood where Mr. Barney's store now is. As I do not like to 
state historical facts without being pretty sure that I am sup- 
ported by authority, and as an estimable lad}- of Medfield has 
furnished me with what I think some of our friends would 
term a legal document, and which may interest the pre 
owners of the price of land to which it relates, I will refer to 
:; 



it. It is a sort of affidavit made apparently in the year 1753, 
and after the piece of land had been sold to Mr. Richard 
Mann, and this is the way it reads: — 

Sherburne, May the first, 1753. 

These few lines may signify to whom it may concern, that I, the 
subscriber, being at the house of Deacon Wheelock four years ago, 
when Mr. Richard Mann was there, about making a bargain about 
a piece of land which the said Wheelock was very loth to sell, be- 
cause the said Wheelock said he would keep fowls and would do 
him damage, which the said Mann did declare and did promise the 
Deacon that he would keep no fowls of his own ; and furthermore 
he promised that he would keep off Crowner Fisher's fowls. These 
few lines above said is truth according to my best remembrance. 

[Signed] Benja. Muzzy. 

Attest : John Death. 

Now that raises a very important point of law, interesting 
at least to Mr. Barney, and if he is present I would call his atten- 
tion to it, whether or not that promise to keep no fowls, and, 
further, to keep off Crowner Fisher's fowls, is a covenant 
which runs with the land; and as I think we had better settle 
questions as they arise, and as we have many eminent mem- 
bers of the legal profession present, the distinguished Chair- 
man of the Judiciary Committee of our House of Representa- 
tives for so many years among the number, and the distin- 
guished gentleman who comes from the town of Sturbridge, 
your offshoot, I rather think after we get through with these 
proceedings, if I do not make them too long, we had best 
organize a court, make Mr. Hamant chief-justice, and we will 
have it out, arranging the lawyers on either side ; and we will 
find out by a judicial decision whether Mr. Barney is now 
obliged to keep off his own fowls, and furthermore obliged to 
keep off Crowner Fisher's fowls. 

Many of the families now live where their ancestors then 
lived. The Morses live where the Morses lived. The Ma- 
sons live where the Masons lived. Mr. William Kingsbury 
lives where his ancestors the Plymptons lived. The Al- 



19 

lens — that family who arc doing noble work in so many 
of the departments of life and labor throughout the country 

and the nation, one of whom wrote the delightful hymn you 
will sing, and another of whom, coming in fidelity to the in- 
stinct and the love of his old town to be with us to-day, met 
with the accident, which we hope is not so serious as at first 
it seemed, — the Aliens live where the Aliens then lived. 
Your respected townsman, Mr. John Ellis, whose youthful 
heart makes his old age green, lives on the spot which the 
town granted to his ancestor of the same name. And Henry 
Adams has not been without descendants, even unto the pres- 
ent generation, to till the fields which he owned. The brook 
runs parallel to the street, as the brook then ran. As we 
think, friends, of the generations which have lived upon its 
banks, how the verse of the poet comes to the mind, — 

" I chatter, chatter, as I flow 
To join the brimming river: 
For men may come and men ma 
But I go on forever." 

The meeting-house stood where the meeting-house now 
stands, — a plain, simple, austere building, but to their vision 
it was "the house of God, the very gate of Heaven." Into 
this house at the beat of the drum every Lord's day they 
came to worship the God of their fathers. Some of them 
came on foot through the paths of the forest for wean' miles and 
miles, with wife and children, and the trusty matchlock carried 
along for protection. In this way some came from that part of 
Wrentham which is now the town of Norfolk; and Joseph 
Morse came with his wife from across the river in Sherburne 
from their new house which they had built near the site of 
Holbrook's mills. 

11 ere they assembled on Sunday, February 20th. It was 
no ordinary company. You could not have found such a com- 
pany outside of New England unless you had gone to < )ld 
England ; and there you would have found its previse parallel 
among the followers of Cromwell and John Milton. In addi- 
tion to the usual company, there were present on that day the 



20 

soldiers quartered in the town ; and they had brought, each 
one, soldiers and citizens, their muskets for protection. They 
sang a hymn, — sang it without the accompaniment of instru- 
mental music which they thought was profanation ; sang it in 
the melody of Puritan voices ; sang it out of the " Bay Psalm 
Book," a book now so rare that a single copy of it is the sub- 
ject of litigation before our highest court ; sang it to one of 
the five or six tunes which constituted their only stock of 
music. Mr. Wilson doubtless delivered an extemporaneous 
discourse, as the custom then was, and probably before he had 
finished the hour-glass was turned. The subject and the 
matter of that sermon we know not ; but we do know that 
this town and the people of his charge lay like a weight upon 
his soul ; and, therefore, we know that the tradition which says 
that he warned his people to be vigilant against surprise is 
true. He prayed, — and with the weight of the town and the 
people on his soul, he committed them to the God of armies 
and the God of mercy. He saw in a vision, as Abraham saw 
by the revelation of God, the great people which was to come 
from that seed, and he pleaded the promises. Would God cut 
them off ? Would he extinguish the hope ? As Jacob wres- 
tled with the angel so wrestled Mr. Wilson in prayer that day, 
and would not cease without the blessing. With the faith of 
a Puritan, he lodged them at the gate of heaven, and placed 
them underneath the almighty power, and they were safe ! 

The company separated, and the tradition is that as they 
left the meeting-house looking across the open plain, with 
nothing to obstruct the view, they saw Indians on Noon Hill. 
I have never been disposed to credit this tradition, but now I 
must confess that it is probably true. There was nothing to 
shut off the sight. The land was cultivated land, without ob- 
struction ; and the base and sides of the hill were not then 
covered as now with wood, but were used for pasturage. It 
probably was, as in the scene described by the poet after the 
departure of the Mayflower upon her homeward voyage. 
You remember the scene, — after the embarkation, the rustling 
of the cordage, the farewells — not to any of their own com- 
pany, for none went back, but to the ship and its company, 



21 

their last connecting link with England, — the sending of 
messages to friends in England, the bustling about of the cap- 
tain, the weighing of the anchor, and the vessel had left her 
moorings, had rounded the point of the Gurnet, and stood out 
to sea, and grew fainter and fainter against the horizon, and 
finally became a speck and then disappeared, 

'•Lo! as they turned to depart, they saw the form of an Indian 
Watching; them from the hill: but while they spake with each other. 
Pointing with outstretched hands, and saying, 'Look!' lie had van- 
ished." 

John Wilson walked to his house that night, in the serene 
trust and faith of a Puritan. 

There was another man in that company, no less a Puritan, 
whose experiences as he walked to his home were different 
from those of any others of the congregation. If we may 
judge of his character by what he did that day, and by what 
we know of his posterity, he was a grim-visaged Puritan, 
who lived in the fear of God, but in every other sense knew 
no such word as fear. 

He left the meeting-house, went down the south road, kept 
on past the house of Samuel Bullen, until the road began to 
become a path, followed it, entered the thicket of woods, 
which stood upon the eastern slope of Mount Nebo, and 
there beheld on the right of him, and on the left, skulking be- 
hind the trees, Indians! He knew what that meant. Two 
courses were open to him : one was to turn back and en- 
deavor to inform the town; the other was to keep on. If he 
had turned back, his wife and children, beyond the thicket, 
would have perished ! Aye, if he had turned back he could 
not have gone five rods alive, and the town would have been 
uninformed, and his wife and children would have perished 
also. He hesitated not a moment. The blood came quickly 
to his temples; but he moved not a muscle of his face, he 
quickened not his step; he looked neither to the right nor to 
the left; he kept on. If he was musical, as some of Ids de- 
cendants have been, he hummed some old Puritan psalm, the 
better to put the savages olt their guard. He emerged from 



22 

the thicket ; he came out on the open land ; he ascended the 
hillock ; he saw the smoke of his own chimney curling from 
the square house inside the stockade ; he walked on ; he en- 
tered the house; what was he to do then? In the name of 
Christ, where was relief to come from then ? A mile and a 
half from the village, three hundred Indians between him and 
that, what should he do ? Should he and his wife and three 
children undertake to cut their way back again to the village ? 
It was suicide ! Should he bolt the doors, and load his match- 
lock, and be ready for the onslaught which he knew would 
come in the morning? One man, one woman, three children, 
against three hundred savages, — it was death ! Should he 
leave the garrison on the other side, and rush with these flee- 
ing ones eight miles through the forest to Dedham ? A hun- 
dred hounds let loose from hell were on their track, and he 
could not do it ! He attended to the usual duties of the day, 
went to his barn, took care of affairs about the house ; he 
locked the doors at the usual hour ; he put out the candles at 
the ordinary time, and lay down upon his bed, — yes, in the 
jaws of death he lay down ! He knew what the darkest hour 
of that night, toward morning, was ; and when, after the agony 
of watching, the hour came, he took his wife and his three 
children, Isaac, Benjamin, and Mary, without noise opening 
the latch and creeping out ; he came down to the valley, be- 
tween that hillock and the opposite one ; went into the thicket 
which skirted the swamp on the other side, careful not to 
break a twig or crackle a leaf ; so they kept on toward where 
Simeon Richardson lives now, and there, in the cranberry 
meadow, he hid them under the protection of a great rock. 
They were probably safe ; and now what does he do ? Reckless 
of danger for himself, back he comes, and indeed it was time ! 
As he came back the darkness broke, the gray of the morn- 
ing twilight began to appear, the rays of the eastern sun to 
pencil the sky; and as he mounted the other hillock, opposite 
to the one where his own house stood, he saw the savages 
battering at his door, and the torch applied to his barn. 
Reckless, careless, mounting the crest of the hill, with the 
woods behind him, pointing to the savages, and beckoning 
to imaginary troops behind him, he shouted at the top of his 



23 

voice, "Come on, boys ! come on! There they are! come 
on! there they are!" A panic seized the savages; back they 
rushed, and toward the town they came. 1 lis name was [saa< 
Chenery. If he was not the model of a Puritan, I know not 
where to find one ! 

Samuel Morse, just before day, went to his barn to Iced his 
cattle. He uncovered the leg oi an Indian on his hay-mow. 
He had barely time to reach his house and get his family to 
the garrison before the house was in flames. The burning of 
that house at the eastern part of the town was the signal for the 
burning of the other parts of the town. Instantly the other 
houses were in flames, and the savages were at their work. A 
poor woman living near the site of the old Isaiah Smith house 
tried to get to the brook for the cover of its thicket, with her 
child. She was shot, and the child crawled over her breast 
crying, " Bloody ! bloody! bloody ! " They came to a poor man 
on the south road, demented of his wits, and shot at him, and 
he cried out at them, " What are you doing ? You will hurt me ; 
you will hurt somebody. " They fired again, and the rags and 
the tatters fell from him, and he said, "There, I told you so; 
I told you you would hurt somebody." They came up to 
him, and, examining him, said, " Hobamoc" — which, in their 
tongue, meant the Devil, — "we no kill him." Lieut. Henry 
Adams, rushing out, half-dressed, to find his men and take the 
command of them, was shot in his doorway. The mother of 
Samuel Smith, on the south road, was knocked in the head, 
and her child flung into the air and left for dead; but by 
God's mercy he lived to a good old age. 

The Indians did not come near the centre of the town, but 
crossing the main road came out again upon the north road 
in front of the house of Thomas Mason. I lis wife fled to 
the garrison with the youngest child, and he is the ancestor of 
the Masons now living among you. The father and the other 
sons were killed on their way to the garrison. In one i)i the 
burning dwellings, John Fussell, aged beyond the lot of man, 
infirm and unable to move, perished with the house. 

All this occupied the shortest possible space of time. 
Among the whites all was confusion, consternation, and alarm. 
Their first impulse was for the women and children. "To the 



2 4 

garrisons, to the garrisons with them!" was the cry. The 
drum beat to arms for the soldiers, and the cavalry mounted 
the saddleless horses. Whether there were three hundred In. 
dians or three thousand, nobody could tell. Somebody rushed 
to the alarm-gun to give the alarm to Dedham. It was fired 
once, — it was fired twice ; the savages fell into a panic and a 
rout; and all, to a savage, rushed to the bridge leading to the 
Nipmuck country, crossed it, put the torch to it as they 
crossed, — and it was over. The hurricane of war had passed ; 
eighteen lay dead ; above half the houses were burned ; and 
the town was in sack-cloth and ashes. 

Then Mr. Wilson sent his despatch to Governor Leverett 
and the council: — 

Honored S ks , 

in a hurry hast : you may please to understand that on y s 2 d day 
morning early, we were beset w th Indians a greate number to our 
amazement although we had considerable watches : I thinke about 
halfe y e towne is fired : man}- wounded, severall slayne, after we had 
fyred : our greate gun twice for to warne dedham of our danger & 
anoth 1 ' it startled y e Indians, at last after much spoyle yy ran over y e 
bridge, fired it as yy left it, ran to sherborne fired the rounds, we 
we hope George fairbanks pallisade y r safe, w 4 y e rest we know not 
ar-2 not w'hout an expectation of the tomorrow morning, it is thought 
yy lay y e way at dedham rode by those y l came fr° theure this night 
to se how it was w th us, so \ rt dedham is not w th out greate danger ; 
y is greate need of helpe suddenly to keepe our town, or to follow 
them if quite gone. 2 mills burnt 

Your honors' humble 

servants John Wilson 

Edward Oakes 
John Jacob 
George barbar : 
By our guess nigh a 1000 Indians. 

No sooner had he written and sent that despatch than he 
received one from the enemy. Capt. Gibbs of Watertown 
brought this, which the Indians had written and posted by 
the bridge as they crossed into the Nipmuck country : — 

Know by this paper that the Indians that thou hast provoked 
to wrath and anger, will war these twenty-one years if you will. 



25 

There are many Indians yett. We come three hundred at this 
time. You must consider that the Indians loose nothing but tl 
lives. You must leave your fair houses and cattle. 

That night Elizabeth Paine, the wife and now the widow of 
Henry Adams, was lying in an upper room in Mr. Wilson's 
house on this spot. She had come to the house of the minis- 
ter as to a refuge and a sanctuary. Capt. Jacob and the 
soldiers were taking leave of Mr. Wilson and the others in 
the room below. His gun accidentally discharged, and she 
was added to the list of the dead. 

Since then, for two hundred years, the morning sun lias 
risen upon this town ; but its rays have enkindled into life no 
such scene of blood and carnage and dismay. For two hun- 
dred years the evening twilight has descended upon this 
peaceful village ; but its parting ray has lingered and dwelt 
upon no scene so fitted to stir the deepest emotions of the 
human heart. Since then, in your streets and households, 
the tireless hand of man's industry, the faithful round of 
woman's duty, have not ceased ; but never was the work 
taken up so despairingly, never did the labor drag so heavily, 
as on that dismal morning after the massacre. 

When all was over, they lay down to rest. Exhausted and 
faint they fell at length into slumber. In dreams again they 
felt the scalping-knife at their throats, the tomahawk at their 
breasts. In dreams again the flames of their own dwellings lit 
the lurid sky, and the war-whoop rang through the street 
and resounded from dwelling to dwelling. "Alas," they cry 
"why was I left, and these, my wife, my husband, my chil- 
dren, taken ? Aye, why was I born to see this day ? Is ( rod 
angry with me? Why has he brought me here? Was it for 
this that I left kith and kin in old England?" Rachel 
mourned for her children and would not be comforted because 
they were not. And as Joshua prayed unto God, so they 
broke out in agony, " Oh Lord God, wherefore hast thou at all 
brought this people out from over Jordan to deliver us into 
the land of the Amonites to destroy us? Would to God we 
had been content, and dwelt on the other side of Jordan !" 

Ah! friends, let us answer this question which they could 



26 

not so clearly answer. Why were these men here ? Aye, 
why were these women here ? What could have tempted 
them to exchange luxury in England for straightness in 
America ? Why should they have exchanged plenty and 
comfort there for want and suffering here ? What motives 
could fasten upon men with hearts and women with fears, to 
induce them to sunder at once and forever the ties that bind 
man to all that is precious in this life, — friends, kindred, home, 
country, — and seek to abide in the wilderness with the savage? 
Looking back upon their act from this period of time, with the 
light of centuries flashing the explanation over it, let us rev- 
erently acknowledge that they were here in fulfilment of the 
great purpose of Almighty God to found upon this continent 
a nation and a people after his own heart. 

For one, I cannot sufficiently express my sense of the abso- 
luteness of the truth that the founders of New England were 
set apart of God for this great purpose ! Look at the facts. 
The entire emigration which peopled this country took place 
inside of ten years. Few came who remained prior to 1630; 
after 1640, nobody came. Twenty thousand persons came 
between 1630 and 1640. As soon as the Long Parliament 
assembled, and they had the shadow of a hope of liberty in 
England, and the least hope and expectation of worshipping 
God according to their consciences there, not a man came. 
Not a man went back, thank God ; but not a man in addition 
came. 

Who were they? They were men and women whom no 
inducement whatever could have brought to this country, 
except fidelity to conscience ! Why was it that the earlier 
expeditions, fitted out at the greatest expense under royal 
patronage, and with every worldly means of success, failed, and 
ignominiously failed ? Why did Jamestown, and the settle- 
ment at the mouth of the Kennebec, fail ? In the language 
of the historian, it was because in the providence of God the 
pretentions of the mighty and the power of the strong were 
denied, in order that the country might be delivered unto 
those whom the great and the mighty despised for their insig- 
nificance, and persecuted for their uprightness. It was not 



2 7 

the plaudit of a friend, it was the confession oi an enemy, who 
said that the spark of liberty had been kept alive in England 

during the dark generations by the Puritans alone; and that 
to them, — to the Puritans, — to such men as your fathers and 
mine. England owes the entire freedom of her constitution. 
It was then to preserve this spark of liberty, to preserve this 
spark and bring it here, — yes, that it should become a flame 
which should inflame the country and encircle the world, — it 
was for this that our fathers came. 

And now, friends, why do we celebrate this day ? Why do 
we come here ? It is not that we can add anything to their 
fame, but it is that we may derive strength and power from 
the contemplation of their virtues. I will tell you why it is : 
it is because the honor of the heroic dead is the inspiration 
of posterity! The important question, the present question, 
is, whether we are true to the principles of our fathers. It is 
not given to every man to be placed in conspicuous positions, 
where his actions may be recounted on subsequent days. 
There were many widows in Zion, in the days of the Prophet 
Elias, but only unto one was the prophet sent, unto Sarepta, 
and unto a woman who was a widow. So the exploits of that 
fatal clay have so far passed out of remembrance that we can- 
not recount all the heroes, or all the exploits which they per- 
formed. The deeds of that trusty man, John Turner, who 
bore the gun that you see before you, — the work of him that 
day, wdiose name is now forgotten, who carried the sword you 
have brought here, in honor of the nameless captain, — haw- 
passed out of memory. Take, therefore, the most conspicuous 
instance of that day, multiply it by the names of all the 
founders of this town ; multiply the bravest deed ol that day 
by the Whee locks, by the Morses, by the Hamants, by the 
Masons, by the Aliens, by the Wights, by the Turners, by the 
Kullens, by the Plymptons, and all the other names ; then 
multiply that by every hamlet and every settlement in the 
colony, and then you shall see what seed-grain God planted 
in this country for the fulfilment of his almighty purposes. 

Pass over the interval since then. Remember that for one 
hundred and ninety years, until the year [830, there was no 



28 

emigration to America, and that they and their descendants 
lived here to multiply, a truly homogeneous people, if ever 
there was one. See them then, comprising one-third of the 
population of the United States, with their descendants in 
every part of it, still faithful to the old Puritan virtues. Look 
upon the revolution accomplished. See the rebellion finished, 
and the blot of slavery forever wiped away, — and tell me if 
America is a failure. 

And, friends, when we think of the new and luxurious blos- 
soms which come out from that old Puritan root, how we 
thank God and fire our hearts with joy ! And how is the state- 
ment of old John Robinson fulfilled, that God had yet further 
truth to break forth out of his word and in his providence ! 
Think of such a life! Think of such a life as has just closed 
in Boston ! Think of a man devoting his youth, his maturity, 
his old age, that the blind may have their sight ; that the deaf 
may hear ; that all maniacs, and poor and unfortunate people, 
and God's afflicted children shall have light and hearing and 
deliverance ! Oh, you need not go so far as that. Think of 
the charities and of the benevolence of the present day ! Re" 
member (if it is not in bad taste to speak of it here) one of 
your own citizens, whose name I will forbear to mention, 
possessed now of an ample fortune, who has given away more 
money than he has left, — and the number of the institutions 
and individuals who have been touched by the electric force 
of his charity, you cannot recount ; and over whose grave- 
stone, when he dies, you will wish to chisel the inscription, 
found in an old Puritan grave-yard in England, " What others 
kept they lost; what this man gave, that he has " ! 

Tell me then, friends, if with these examples, if this be the 
spirit, if with this new fruit of the Puritan tree, the republic 
of the New World is to perish ! 

On the first leaf of your church-records is placed one of the 
most touching recitals which I remember to have read. It is 
the relation of Samuel Smith who was thrown into the air and 
left for dead, when his mother was killed on the south road. 
When people were admitted into the church then, the minister 
required their relations in writing ; and among those which 



2 9 

are preserved, taken by Mr. Baxter, the successor of Mr. 

Wilson, is that of Samuel Smith. He was then at the age of 
maturity. After recognizing the infinite goodness of God in 
preserving his life on that occasion, he says, " My grandfather 
would be constantly putting me in mind that it was not for 
nothing that I was saved." Ah, friends, it was " not for 
nothing" that he was saved. It was "not for nothing" that 
Medfield went through the fire and blood that day, or that 
the Puritans were driven to these shores, and laid the founda- 
tions of this nation ; but it was for all that is valuable to man, 
or precious in the sight of God ! The sixth President of the 
United States, the most distinguished kinsman of Henry 
Adams, the Lieutenant of the Town who was shot in his 
doorway that day, unless it be his own illustrious father, the 
second President, said that " Massachusetts was a colony of 
conscience." So were they all — all the New England colo- 
nies — colonies of conscience. God grant that as the ages 
roll, the grand old Commonwealth which lias grown out of 
that colony, and the glorious nation which that Commonwealth 
has done so much to create and to preserve, may be a State 
and a nation of conscience, forever. 

The President. — I have the pleasure now to introduce 
to you the Poet of the clay, one of the sons of Medfield. 1 lis 
kindred and friends are gratified by the character he sustains, 
and are this day most happy to know that he possesses the 
gift of song. 

The Poem was then read by the author, James Hewins, 
Esq., of Medfield. 

A LEGEND OF MEDFIELD. 

"In some houses the wife running away with one child, the husband with 
another, of whom the one was killed, the other escaped." — Hubbard's "Indian 
Wars,'''' p. 62. 

Through mist of years departed, 

Down vistas all divine, 
Come echoes of a legend, 

A la) oi olden time. 



SO 

Upon a peaceful hamlet, 
When Winter's sun rolled low, 

The morning dawned in brightness 
Two hundred years ago. 

The same hills watch the valley 

That guarded it of yore ; 
The same sun lights the river 

That wanders to the shore : 
The rest of that bright picture. 

Unrolled before the day, 
Time's all-effacing fingers 

Have slowly worn away. 

Upon the chilly night-wind, 

When all the earth was still, 
The foeman's signal echoed 

From valley up to hill : 
When slowly came the dawning, 

Like wolves the foe crept down, 
And prayers and war-cries blended 

Above a blazing town. 

And rode that day a charger, 

Whose phantom hoof-beats ring 
Down Time's enchanted valleys, 

The Wampanoag King, — 
A warrior brave and daring, 

For whose rejected name, 
At the judgment day of nations, 

Some honor may remain. 

But fairer than the romance 

Time weaves round Philip's name, 

Or the immortal valor 

That won our fathers' fame, 

The deed of pure devotion, 
The simple, homely lay, 

The guardian hills surrounding, 
Beheld and heard that day. 

Upon the hamlet's border, 

Within the valley fair, 
Where south-winds loved to linger 

And flowers perfumed the air, — 



3i 

Dwell with a wife and children, 
While years in gladness ran. 

Unvexed by England's priesthood 
An exiled Puritan. 

A peaceful, quiet yeoman, 

Who ever daily trod, 
By brighter hopes attended. 

The pathway of his God; 
A brave, devoted woman, 

Whose name and lineage fair 
The daughters of the hamlet 

In after-years should bear. 

Upon that doleful morning, 

When, on the winter air. 
Rose from the lips of many 

The unavailing prayer ; 
And when the dreaded war-whoop 

On cradled slumber fell, 
And to the mother's listening 

Came like a funeral knell, — 

A courage superhuman 
Infusing all her soul, 
■'John, take thy Mary," said she, 
•• For now the alarm-drums roll, — 
And I will go with Richard ; 

Thou through the woods, and I 
Across the field and meadow 
Will to the fortress fly. 

"And if," she said, "while living, 

We meet again no more, 
We'll wait each other's coming 

On the eternal shore." 
Then they embraced in silence 

And kissed a long farewell, 
And, parting in the morning, 

Met not when evening fell. 

The bolts of death above her 

Low hurtled in the air. 
And through the valley echoed 

The wild cries of despair. 



3* 

The faces of her kindred, 

The voices of the dead, 
The vision of the future, 

Inspired her as she fled. 

She sees a band of women, 

Devoted, noble, brave, 
Co-workers with our fathers, 

This lovely land to save; 
She sees a race of heroes, 

Of yeomen firm and true, 
Who pierced the outer darkness 

Till the light of God shone thro ugh . 

She sees a peaceful village : 

Upon a fairer one, 
In his unceasing cycles, 

Ne'er shone the golden sun ! 
But Death, that restless angel, 

Who roams the earth and sea, 
Descending from the hillside, 

Crossed over to the lea. 

For when the sun declining 

His golden glory shed 
Upon the smoking ruins, 

The living and the dead, — 
He threw a heavenly halo 

Around the upturned face 
Of that heroic mother, — 

The child in her embrace. 

But hark ! — upon Time's pinions 

And through the vale of years. 
In space forever rumbling 

And rolling with the spheres, 
Comes faintly to our listening 

The booming of a gun : 
To-day in tones of thunder 

The thrilling answers come. 

They wake the buried echoes-; 

They rush upon the soul, 
As storm-tossed waves of ocean 

On slumbering beaches roll. 



33 

Again the foe is flying 

In terror through the lea; 
The river bears the tidings 

In triumph to the sea. 

Now softly comes the twilight 

Of centuries ago ; 
Within the deepening shadow 

Retires the vanquished foe; 
Upon the fading landscape 

Descends the night of years, 
And through the mystic gateway 

The vision disappears. 

Then in that woeful gloaming, 

When the last dark foe had fled, 
The father and the daughter 

Sought their beloved dead. 
They found them in the meadow. 

Where now the willows wave 
And wild-flowers bloom forever 

Above their nameless grave. 

Till yonder hills shall crumble, — 

Our river melt away 
As night-engendered vapors 

Before the dawn of day, — 
The memory of that mother, 

Enshrined in every soul, 
Will brighten through the future 

While ages onward roll. 

Let endless generations 

This hallowed story know 
Of martyrdom heroic 

Two hundred years ago ! 
And children's children listen, 

When evening shadows fall, 
To catch the sound of hoof-beats 

And hear the foe-man's call. 

After music by the band, a recess of one hour was taken 
for a collation in the vestry of the Unitarian Church. 

At about two o'clock, P. M., the congregation re-assembled 

5 



34 

in the hall, and a hymn written for the occasion, by the Rev. 
J. H. Allen, of Cambridge, was sung. 

Silent and still the Sabbath light 

Had faded in the west ; 
The village homes and scattered farms 

Were sinking into rest. 
Silent and still, by rock and hill, 

Lay hid the savage foe ; 
So night came down on fort and town 

Two hundred years ago. 

The skulking savage, stealthy, slow, 

Through all that wintry night, 
Crept close by homestead, fence, and barn, 

To wait the dawning light. 
The morning came, with sudden flame, 

That lit the waste of snow ; 
And blazed the pyres of fifty fires 

Two hundred years ago. 

We tread the fields our fathers trod ; 

We walk our fathers' ways ; 
The same, the everlasting God 

We seek in prayer and praise. 
Their harder lot — we share it not; 

Nor may our children know 
What terrors, prayers, and griefs were theirs 

Two hundred years ago. 

The President. — Ladies and gentlemen, the year, you 
remember, is Leap year, as well as Centennial year ; and, 
therefore, we cheerfully concede to the young ladies present 
the privilege to speak first on this occasion, as we would 
always concede to their sex the claim to be remembered and 
honored, on all occasions, as chief promoters of the welfare 
and happiness of the community, on whose loyalty to the best 
interest of the State and of the nation we may always safely 
rely. If there is no young lady or maiden lady in the audi- 
ence who will respond, may we not hope that there is some 
young man here who will honor himself by speaking in their 
behalf ? 

[No one volunteered to respond.] 



35 

The President. — I had hoped and confidently expected 
that I should have the privilege and pleasure to announce to 
you the presence of His Excellency the chief magistrate of 
the Commonwealth. In place of this gratification, however, 
I must read to you a letter expressing his regret that he can- 
not be here. 

Boston, Feb. 14th, 1876. 

Rev. Charles C. Sew/all, Medfield, Mass. : — 

Dear Sir, — I have received your valued favor of the 14th inst., with 
an invitation to the ceremonies commemorative of the burning of Med- 
field in the war of Philip against the early settlers of New England. I 
beg you to accept mv hearty thanks for this courtesy, and were it 
consistent for me to absent myself from duties here on that day, I 
should greatly enjoy the promised pleasures of your celebration. I now 
see that I shall not be able to leave Boston on Monday next. 

I am, dear sir. with great respect, yours very truly, 

• Alex. H. Rice. 

The President. — Passing over several other leading- 
members of the State Government, I offer you now a senti- 
ment relating to "The Judiciary of the State," whose intelli- 
gence and integrity are of the greatest importance to the 
people. We rejoice that it is still honored by the appointment 
of members eminently qualified to sustain its best character, 
and to fulfil the high purpose for which it was established ; 
and as no member of that body is now present, I will call upon 
the Hon. Mr. Cogswell, Chairman of the Committee of the 
Judiciary in the present Legislature, to respond. 

REMARKS OF HON. JOHN P.. I). COGSWELL. 

Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen. : — 

As will be seen by the manner of introduction of your honored 
President, my connection with the Judiciary of Massachusetts is 
indeed of the slightest ; but as the Persian proverb says, " If we 
cannot be the rose, it is at all events sweet to be near the rose " ; 
and it happened to me to be born near the spot which contributed 
to the Bar and to the Judiciary of this Commonwealth two names 



36 

which ever will be honored by the people of this State. I refer to 
the village of Great Marshes, in Barnstable County, which con- 
tributed. first in the colonial days, in the year 1725, James Otis, Jr., 
whose magnificent argument in 1760 upon the writs of assistance 
in Boston, John Adams said, who heard it, "breathed into Ameri- 
can independence the breath of life." And on the same spot was 
born in 1780 that Chief Magistrate of the Commonwealth, Lemuel 
Shaw, who held the scales of justice for us so that no man could 
see them quiver in his hand. 

You have here in Norfolk County two distinguished members of 
the Judiciary, whom I understand from the President he had 
expected to introduce to you, — the venerable and learned Judge 
Wilkinson, of Dedham, and that other junior member of the bench, 
Judge Colburn, with whom I had the pleasure to be a schoolmate 
in my youth, who I believe has endeared himself by his manly, 
honorable, and able course at the bar to the people of this com- 
munity. 

Sir, I have the honor to come here to-day to listen to these very 
interesting exercises, and participate in the great pleasure which we 
all have felt in this peaceful, rural, peculiarly New England cele- 
bration of a grim and ghastly scene, well described by the Rev. 
Mr. Wilson as a " grizely " one. I can tender to you here, at all 
events, the congratulations on this day of the Old Colony where I 
was born, and whence my maternal ancestry is derived. My collat- 
eral ancestor, Peregrine White, in his boyhood may have played 
with this very sword which lies at my feet, which I am told was 
brought over in the " Mayflower," upon which vessel he was born, in 
1620, in the harbor of Provincetown. From that great stock of 
empire I have the honor to claim direct descent through an ances- 
tor who arrived in the "Fortune" in 162 1, the first ship that came 
to the relief of the Pilgrims of Plymouth after the " Mayflower " 
left. 

Now, sir, if I shall not trespass too long upon your patience and 
that of this audience, I should like to say a few words about the 
Indians themselves, and to present them, or some of them, in a 
different light from that in which we naturally would regard them, 
upon this day. When the Pilgrim ancestors of our Old Colony 
came to Provincetown they commenced, you know, in carrying off the 
Indians' corn, at Gurnet, or Truro, by trespassing upon the rights 
of the natives, for which I believe they afterwards did their very 
best fully to atone. It was at Eastham, on the Cape, that they had 



37 

the first contest with the Indians, when they were looking for the 
spot of settlement, which they called the First Encounter. It was 
at Cape Cod, and they returned, when nearly famished to I'l\ 
mouth, and there from the Indians they bought and paid for the 
corn which saved the famishing settlement at Plymouth, From the 
Indians of that part of the country our fathers received only kind- 
ness and acts of friendship. When a boy strayed from Plymouth 
to Sandwich through the woods, and being taken up there was car- 
ried on through the Cape towns to Eastham, the site of the then 
powerful tribe of Nausets, an expedition, of which Standish and 
Winslow were at the head, went to look for him. And at Barn- 
stable, and Yarmouth where I was born, — in Yarmouth, they were, 
as they have thankfully recorded, courteously entertained by that 
noble young Indian chief, only twenty-eight years of age, tall. 
stately, manly, noble as a forest pine, whom they called the courte- 
ous sachem of the Mattakeesetts ; and when they wanted water he 
brought it to them with his own hands in the night time, and car- 
ried them on, as pilot and guide, to Eastham, where after a short 
negotiation with the Nausets, a hundred of them brought off to the 
boat of the Pilgrims the lost boy ; and when they went on shore 
and found a squaw standing there who wept, as they say, profusely, 
and they asked her why she wept, our fathers were told that she 
was thinking of her boy who, in 1607, had been carried away with 
six other young Cape Indians, and sold into slavery by one of the 
companions of John Smith in his famous New England expedition. 
So it is Well for us to remember this clay that the Indians had 
some cause, or thought they had, of wrong against our fathers. ( >f 
this famous chieftain of the Wampanoags, great, wily, dark savage 
though he was, certainly nothing more can be said than that our 
fathers were growing and planting their settlements, and that he 
realized that then, if ever, was the time when it should be deter- 
mined whether the white race should possess the soil, and the Indi- 
ans should pass away from it forever. What wonder then that 
fighting according to the custom of his kind he waged a war of 
extermination against the whites. 

But, sir, our fathers in the Old Colony had done their duty by 
the Indians in that quarter. Eliot, the great apostle, had visited 
Yarmouth in 1656, five years after this settlement, eighteen years 
after the settlement of that town, to see what could be done to re- 
claim the Indians there, and after him came Pastor Thornton, of 
Yarmouth, the third minister who had left England because he 



3§ 

would not submit to the act of conformity, who at once set himself 
to work to reclaim and civilize the Indians there. They were more 
numerous at the time of King Philip's war on the Cape than the 
white people were. It was a region eminently fitted to their 
wandering habit of life. The fish swam in the sea ; the shell-fish 
were embedded in the shore ; the waters were alive with fowls ; the 
woods were thick with deer. "There," said Hawley, who had been 
a missionary to the Six Nations of New York, " there was the 
Indians' paradise." Other good men besides Thornton endeavored 
to Christianize and educate the Indians. There were the Bournes, 
of Sandwich, and the Tuppers. There was Mayhew at Martha's 
Vineyard, who had great influence over the Indians on the island. 
There was, above all, Samuel Treat, the first minister of Eastham, 
on the Cape, whose grandson, Robert Treat Paine, was one of the 
signers of the Declaration of Independence, who wrote to Cotton 
Mather, from Eastham, " I have taken under my bishopric all the 
Indians of Provincetown and Yarmouth." He was a man of great 
presence, of loud and commanding voice, which, it is said, used to 
be heard from his little meeting-house there, even above the storms 
that howled, over the plains of Nauset. Fond of simple merri- 
ment — and he, more than any man of all the laborers among the 
Indians, seems to have given his whole heart to them, — he visited 
them in their wigwams ; he attended their rude entertainments ; he 
taught them to read and write ; he translated portions of the Bible 
into the Indian tongue ; he even introduced magistracy among 
them. And this was before the period of King Philip's war. And 
so it happened, Mr. President, that when that war broke out, 
although our people upon the Cape and upon the islands were less 
in number than the Indians who surrounded them, innumerable 
almost as the leaves of the forest ; hence, it happened, that not an 
Indian from that region joined in the war against the people of 
Medfield. If they had joined their brothers and followed the ban- 
ner of the chief of the Wampanoags, to whom they owed obedience, 
nothing could have saved the colonies of Plymouth and Massachu- 
setts Bay. The shock must have been irresistible. But because 
they were peaceable and remained at home, it happened that our 
people of the Cape, when Rehoboth and the other towns in the 
Old Colony were burned, were enabled to write to their distressed 
brethren : " Come to us and live with us until this storm of war is 
past." Hence it was that we were able to send, under the leader- 
ship of Hinckley, of Barnstable (afterwards Governor, and the last 



39 

Governor of the Old Colony), a band which rendered most efficient 
service in the war against King Philip. And it is characteristic of 
the great spirit of our fathers and of our mothers that on the day 
when Hinckley was in the swamp-fight where King Philip fell, his 
wife, bearing to him a daughter in Barnstable, and desiring thai it 
should be christened on the very day, in that day of peril and 
intense anxiety, the husband and the father fighting the savage far 
away, directed the minister to christen her child " Reliance " in 
token that she relied upon the God of battles; and Reliance grew 
up to marry the first minister of Harwich, on the Cape, and to be- 
come the ancestress of many illustrious citizens. 

So, sir, we of the Old Colony cannot regard the Indian as the 
monster which it would be natural for him to be considered by 
the people of this region which he devastated. I will take a 
moment longer to remind you that we remember instances in which 
the Indians amongst us showed that they remembered acts of kind- 
ness with gratitude, and that they luvea the friends of the Indian. 
When Pastor and Missionary Treat died, one of those terrible snow- 
storms had fallen which sometimes block up our narrow roads upon 
the Cape, so that for many days in those primitive times it was im- 
possible to break out a roadway. The Indians came and begged 
that they, who despised manual labor as a rule, might be allowed to 
dig out a tunnel through the snows, and upon their shoulders they 
bore the revered pastor and friend to his grave. By Indian hands 
he was buried. And when the great-grandchild of Bourne, who 
had procured from the Colonial Legislature the grant of a township 
of land containing ten thousand acres, for the use forever of the 
Mashpee Indians, — when this great grandson of Bourne was lying 
grievously ill, and past medical skill as it was thought, the Indian 
medicine-men came to the house and begged that they might be 
allowed to do something to relieve the sufferings of the descendant 
of their benefactor; and the family tradition is that the Indian 
pow-wows brought him back to life and health. 

The Rev. Dr. Alden, who was born in Yarmouth, wrote in 1792 
that within the memory of men still living there were more Indians 
in that town than white people. If the Indians of the Cape did not 
join in the war of King Philip, it was not because they were not 
possessed of warlike spirit. For when Captain Thatcher raised 
his company in Yarmouth to go to the siege of Louisburg thirteen 
Indians went with him, and it was one of the Yarmouth Indians 
that entered first the bastion of the great tort at Louisburg. We 



40 

enlisted them again in the Revolutionary War, and in the War of 
the Rebellion the descendants of the tribe of Mashpee fought upon 
the side of the Union, — and unfortunately those of the Indians 
who went to the wars seldom or never returned. 

My father, the pastor for many years of the Congregational 
Church in Yarmouth, took me when a little boy to see the last sur- 
vivor of all the great numbers of Indians who once lived in the 
lower towns of the Cape, when our fathers came here, and when 
Medfield was ravaged two centuries ago. They all passed away, 
by that inexorable law which decrees death to the Indians in the 
presence of the white man, except in the town of Mashpee, which 
still remains occupied by the descendants of the Indians, now 
few in number, who are the first of their race who have ever been 
enfranchised, relieved from tutelage, and declared to be citizens, — 
Mashpee having been created a town in 1870. And in the follow- 
ing year I had, as candidate for Representative to the General 
Court, the honor of receiving the first Indian votes ever thrown 
anywhere in this country. 

Only the summer before last I went on Sunday to attend religious 
worship in their little church, still standing in the primeval forest 
in solitude, and listened to their rude exercises, and heard their 
primitive hymns; and to-day, therefore, I would say, in conclusion, 
that I feel justified, representing that region which did so much by 
its efforts and by its influence upon the Indians to save the colo- 
nies in the war of King Philip, in the name of these late constitu- 
ents of mine, who, though of Indian origin, are nevertheless peace- 
ful and obedient and worthy citizens of the Commonwealth, to 
tender from them, the descendants of the peaceful Indians of the 
Cape, to you, the descendants of those whom their kinsmen ravaged 
and spoiled two hundred years ago, to-day the olive-branch of 
peace. 

The President. — After this most eloquent defence of the 
Indians, it may be appropriate for me to read a sentiment, 
which I trust will find a response in your hearts, though he 
who had been expected to respond to it, a former commis- 
sioner of the Indians, is not present: — 

"The remaining tribes of Indians in our land, — we will harbor towards 
them no feeling of revenge for the deeds of their fathers, but pity them 
for the wrong they are made to endure, and seek their welfare by the cul- 
tivation of mutual peace and mutual helpfulness." 



4i 
I will next give you a sentiment in relation to Dedham : — 

" Our good old mother Dedham, — we would never forget the excellent 

character which has always belonged to her, nor cease to cherish and 
exhibit a grateful and faithful attachment to her." 

No one volunteering to respond, the President read the next 
toast, as follows : — 

"Our friends; citizens of the adjoining towns which were once pari of 
the town of Medfield, — we cherish toward them an attachment which we 
hope will lie preserved and strengthened by mutual expressions of con. 
fidence and sympathy." 

Responded to by the Rev. Theron Brown, of Norwood, as 
follows : — 

RESPONSE OF MR. BROWN. 

Mr. President : — 

I simply rise to decline to make a speech. I don't feel indig- 
enous or aboriginal to this part of the country ; but still I can claim 
perhaps, a little connection with this occasion, and with the subject 
before us, so universally interesting. I suppose I should not have 
been here if King Philip had not been a very humane man, and one 
who was true to his friends ; and, as it happened, my emigrant an- 
cestor, old John Brown, was a friend of King Philip's father. The 
old sachem used to call upon him where he lived, out not very far 
from Bullock's Cove as it now is, with his son James, and becoming 
very friendly to him and his family. When the old man died he 
charged upon his sons Philip and Alexander to always be friendly 
to Mr. Brown's family. So when the surrounding towns were 
burned, and the stockades were invaded, and all the places of 
treasure-storing and of refuge were assailed by the Indians under 
the lead of King Philip. Mr. Brown's family was unmolested : and so 
inconsequence of that I claim that I owe to King Philip's humanity 
and forbearance my present place in this land of the living, and my 
opportunity to rise up and decline making a speech. 

The President read the next sentiment as follows: — 

"The towns of Sturbridge and Southbridge, — although no longer 
hearing their mother's name, may the} continue to gratify her mater- 
6 



42 

nal pride, and to fulfil her maternal hopes, by their eminence in all that 
constitutes the true honor and prosperity of a community." 

I will ask H. D. Hyde, Esq., of Boston, a native of Stur- 
bridge, to respond to this sentiment. 

REMARKS OF MR. HENRY D. HYDE. 

Mr. Preside?^, Ladies, and Gentlemen : — 

It is with no small degree of satisfaction and pleasure that I 
have come to-day to participate with you in the exercises of this 
occasion. There are four of us here to-day, representing your 
daughter, New Medfield, as it was originally called when first char- 
tered by the Legislature. Sturbridge, as it is now called, was a 
name taken some years after, and then what was originally New 
Medfield has since been divided into the two towns of Sturbridge 
and Southbridge. It was pleasant this morning, as our friend, Mr. 
Bishop, was mentioning over the names of the ancient citizens here, 
to find how familiar they were and have always been to my ears. 
The Wheelocks, the Masons, the Plymptons, the Morses are all 
names that are familiar in Sturbridge • and so with the Wights and 
the Fisks ; and there are quite a number of names that I find re- 
corded in the annals of this town which are common names with us. 
It is a well-known fact that there were three applications made by 
the inhabitants of Medfield to the Legislature for permission to 
settle in what was then called one of the Plantations, in the interior 
of the State, and an unbroken wilderness. 

The first knowledge we have that Sturbridge, or that portion of 
the State, was known except to the Indians was when, thirteen 
years after the landing of the Pilgrims, John Oldham reported 
through the Indians that there was a mine of black-lead, or plum- 
bago, in that locality. That mine was soon after worked, when the 
town was settled, and continued to be within my remembrance. It 
has since been discontinued because of larger deposits elsewhere • 
but the property is still owned by the Tudor family of Boston, and 
the mine was for man)' years worked very successfully. 

As before stated, there were three applications made to the 
Legislature to settle this locality. The first was made in 1727, 
and was denied; the second was made in 1729, and was also de- 
nied ; but later in the year, a third application was favored by the 
Legislature, and permission was given the applicants, from the 



town of Medfield, to go there and settle, provided that within s< 
years there should be fifty families located there, and thai each 
family should erect a house, eighteen feet square, should break up 
and bring into tillage seven acres of land, should settle an orthodox 
minister, and give him his share of the land. They went there in 
the fall probably, of 1730. At first but a few went ; later in the 
next year several families followed. Two of the first settlers from 
here were of the name of Fisk, and they settled in that portion of 
the town which has ever since borne the name of Fisk Hill. There 
was another hill over opposite, known as Shumway Hill, settled 
from this town. The first winter the Fisk brothers spent in town 
they were alone ; and they supposed they were the only inhabitants 
of that region. But one clear afternoon, while engaged in chopping 
they heard the sound of a distant axe, and also the person using 
that axe heard the sound of their axe ; and so following the sounds 
of the axes, they approached each other, until they reached the 
banks of the Quinnebaug River, each until then supposing he was 
the only inhabitant of the wilderness. They each felled a tree, and 
thus making a bridge crossed the river, exchanged civilities, alter 
which each returned to his locality, remained there, and continued 
the work of clearing the forest. 

This morning, when your orator was saying that in some portions 
of the town some people were denied the privilege of having chick- 
ens, I was reminded of a tradition that the early settlers were con- 
tent with beans, and that that was the principal article of diet. The 
story goes that one Fisk went and put a pot of beans upon the 
kitchen fire as he and his brother went out to their daily avocations. 
When they came home at night they found that a high wind, which 
had arisen during the day, had blown a large stone down the chim- 
ney and tipped over the pot of beans ; and New Medfield that night. 
it is said, went supperless to bed. 

A school was established in 1730, and two years later incorpo- 
rated by the Legislature. The first house of worship was dedicated 
soon after. 

It seems, in those early days, there were frequent visits back 
and forth between the people of New Medfield and Old Medfield, 
and I have often heard my mother tell of her grandmother going 
back and forth to this town on visits to her old friends here, the 
journey being made upon horseback. My direct ancestors on my 
mother's side came from this town, and bore the name of Wight. 
I believe there are several remaining in this town of that name. 



44 

My great-grandfather's name was David Wight. He was born 
here in 1730, I think. His wife was Catharine Morse. They were 
married here, moved to Medway, kept hotel there a short time, and 
then moved to New Medfield. My great-grandfather there pur- 
chased a thousand acres of land, paid $4,800 for it, and settled 
near the centre of the town, where many of his descendants reside 
until the present. Two of their descendants, besides myself — 
David and William Wight — are here to-day. Some of you, I think, 
have heard before the story that is told of my grandfather, Capt. 
Alpheus Wight, who went from here when he was three years 
old, and passing down through Charlton woods on the second day 
before reaching Sturbridge, tumbled off from the load of goods 
into a ravine. What he might have accomplished but for this acci- 
dent it is impossible for any one to say ; but as it was, he lived to 
the good old age of eighty, and became the father of fourteen chil- 
dren, all of whom lived to grow up. 

They tell the story that the name of the first school-master there 
was not like the one we read of in the legend of Sleepy Hollow, 
Ichabod Crane, but Ichabod Spooner Crane ; that he was directed 
to instruct the youth of the town ; and that he used to go about 
from house to house, instructing them in the New England primer 
and Dilworth's spelling-book. He was allowed to omit so much of 
the spelling-book as he thought would be of no practical use. 
When the pupils had grown up and were nearly ready to graduate, 
the story is told that he was in the habit of exercising them in the 
Psalter, and also in the first book of Chronicles, the 10th chapter 
of Nehemiah, and any portion of the Bible where he could find a 
full page of Hebrew names. 

It is said of my direct ancestors, Mr. David Wight and his wife, 
she who was Susan Morse, that they were frugal, industrious peo- 
ple, who pursued the even tenor of their ways, except that it is 
said (though probably it is not true) that she was a little more 
ambitious than he, and was rather wont to jog his slower steps, and 
was generally the pushing one of the two ; at least, whether she 
would let him or not, or whether he relied so much upon her judg- 
ment, after he had been up and looked at two tracts of land, each 
of a thousand acres, he declined to make any purchase until she 
should have gone up and visited it ; so she went on horseback and 
visited the two tracts. He abided by her judgment, and took the 
one where they settled. I have often heard the old people speak 
of seeing her go to church (I don't remember her), and that until 



45 

she was past eighty she used to go on horseback, riding with ap- 
parent vigor; and also, it is said, that she always hitched her horse 
to the lightning-rod. I suppose her idea was that electricity was 
cheaper than oats. 

The names which I have been accustomed from my earliest 
childhood to hear spoken of as these of citizens of our town arc 
names, as I have said, they are also familiar to you here. They 
are common names with you and common names with us. " New 
Medfield" was the name by which the town was early known ; al- 
though let me say that Southbridge before it was set off ( I 
suppose the idea came from the fact of the good character of this 
town ; it was at first simply a portion of Sturbridge, although it is 
now the larger of the two) was known by the name of Honest- 
town. The names that are familiar to my ears are the same that 
are familiar to you. Our ancestors are common. In early days they 
were here together and then separated. Back and forth they went 
several times, until finally I suppose that for the most part we 
are strangers to each other, although our fathers knew each other 
well. Another incident is told that the oldest son of David Wight 
once came down to Medfield to make a little visit and call upon 
his friends. On his way back he fell in with a young lady of this 
town, who was coming up to visit some of her relatives there, and 
then it was the old story. He married her soon after she arrived. 
So there are many things which tie us together, — New Medfield 
and Old Medfield. 

One of the earliest settlers from Medfield was Mr. Moses Marcy, 
who was often spoken of as the first citizen of the town. Two of 
his direct descendants have attained honorable distinction, — Hon. 
William L. Marcy, Governor of New r York, and Secretary of State 
under President Pierce, and Miss Charlotte Cushman, to whose 
memory Boston is this day paying the last tribute of respect. 

It is certainly not without a good deal of pleasure that four of us 
have come here to-day as representing the town of New Medfield. 
We hope four years hence to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the town of New Medfield. We cannot wait until 
the second century comes round, for fear we may not he there, and 
so we want you to come up when our celebration takes place. We 
are afraid in fifty years some of you may not be here. 

It is a very pleasant thing, allow me to say, for these towns to 
keep up their identity, — for them to keep up this spirit of township, 
this spirit which, after all, lies at the foundation of what there is in 



4 6 

our government which is a thing of value. When the town organ- 
ization shall have disappeared, and the interest in the town govern- 
ment shall be stricken out, the' larger pillars will also fall and 
crumble to pieces. It was by this spirit that our fathers were able, 
after the Revolution, to organize a system of government. It was 
by this spirit that we have been able to go thus far in our career of 
peaceful government. And it has been said, I think wisely, that 
had this same system of township organization, and town govern- 
ment, and town authority which has existed in New England, pre- 
vailed in the Southern States, the last war would never have been 
possible. 

It is a pleasant retrospect to look over the history of these towns, 
and find out how much there is of interest, and how much comes 
back of old association. 

Thus it is that history goes forward making her great progress, 
and thus it is that our fathers participated in it ; and soon we shall 
have fulfilled our course here and shall have passed on. It is 
pleasant, therefore, to come together, as we come to-day, to speak of 
our ancestors, of their common hopes and fears, of their joys and 
desires, if by chance we may thus be impelled in some small degree 
to emulate their example : — 

" We tread the paths their feet have worn , 

We sit beneath their orchard-trees, 

We hear, like them, the hum of bees, 
And rustle of the bladed corn ; 
We turn the pages that they read, 

Their written words we linger o'er; 
But in the sun they cast no shade. 
No voice is heard, no sign is made, 

No step is on the conscious floor ! " 

The President then read an interesting sentiment, as fol- 
lows : — 

"Our forefathers and foremothers, the founders of our village, — 
rejoicing in our present prosperity, much of which we owe to the spirit 
which they unconsciously transmitted to their descendants, we remember, 
and will hand down the memory of their enterprise and their sufferings 
to the generations which shall follow us." 

The President. — I would ask the Rev. Mr. Hammond, of 



47 

Monson, who is allied to us by regular descent from the found- 
ers of the village of Medfield, to respond to this sentiment. 

REMARKS OF REV. CHARLES HAMMOND, OF MONSON. 

Having the opportunity some months since, to examine the town 
records of Medfield — a favor several times granted to rile, — I 
found the fragment of a very ancient document, to which was ap- 
pended the signatures of very many of the "forefathers, the found- 
ers of this your village." The names of the " foremothers " were 
wanting. 

In the "Annals of Dedham," by Herman Mann, 1 have since 
found this document printed entire, with the names of forty-three 
signers. It is a compact or league of the subscribers, whereb) the) 
formed "a society for removing to Medfield." This compact was 
most carefully prepared, and as it relates to the regulations for the 
settlement of the new plantation, it must he considered as the doc- 
ument which introduces the proper civil history of the town. 

This compact shows who the forefathers were, and the motives, 
purposes, and principles which controlled the policy of the first set- 
tlers, and so became influential in determining the character of the 
people, in succeeding generations. 

The provisions of this original compact of the " forefathers " of 
Medfield, are very remarkable, and have no precedents so far as 
known. One article of the compact pledges the real endeavor "to 
resolve and issue" in "a peaceful manner," "differences, questions, 
or contentions, in our own town, before they come to a place of 
public judicature." Another article provides, a "faithful en- 
deavor " that " only such be received to our societ) and township 
as we may have satisfaction in ; that they are honest, peaceable, and 
free from scandal and erroneous opinions." 

The " forefathers " who signed the Medfield compact were all. 
doubtless, emigrants from Great Britain, most of them genuine 
"first-comers," constituting heads of "endless genealogies." 

The first signer of this compact, and doubtless its author, and 
the leader of the enterprise, was Ralph Wheelock, and for this rea 
son he deserves a special notice. There are many Other names on 
the list worthy of commemoration. 

Ralph Wheelock was n non-conformisl minister in England, 
though he ncwei- had a charge in this country. lie was horn in the 
county of Shropshire-, or Salop, as often called, and graduated at 



4 8 

Cambridge University, being a member of Clare Hall College, 
where he received his degree of A. M., in 1631. He was a con- 
temporary of John Milton, at Cambridge, who took his Master's 
degree in 1632. When he lived at Declham he was a school-master, 
an office his fellow-collegian Milton held with honor. After he re- 
moved to Medfield he was a civil magistrate, and occasionally 
preached as a supply for vacant churches. Having a great tact for 
practical affairs, he was much employed in public services, being 
regarded as one of the most learned and at the same time one of 
the most useful and judicious citizens of the colony. 

His son, Captain Eleazar Wheelock, settled as a pioneer emi- 
grant in Mendon. He was an heroic officer in King Philip's war, 
and yet in times of peace he lived on excellent terms with the In- 
dians, treating them with great kindness and humanity, and often 
joining with them in the chase. His son, having the ancestral pas- 
sion for emigration, settled in Windham, Conn., in 1702. He was 
the father of Rev. Dr. Eleazar Wheelock, of Lebanon, Conn., cele- 
brated as the founder of Moors' Charity School for Indian youth, 
and also of Dartmouth College. His son, Dr. John Wheelock, 
succeeded him as the second President of Dartmouth. 

Other families of the first generation of residents in this town 
have an illustrious record of transmitted names and influence and 
fame in all the learned professions, and in all honorable callings, 
which could be easily made to appear, if the time would permit. 

There are very many New England towns which, having a hun- 
dred years of history and more, can commemorate this Centennial 
year, the local events connecting them with the struggle for our 
common liberty made secure forever by the Revolution of 1776. 

But the towns are very few having a history of two hundred years 
and more, as this town has, and has the responsibility of recalling, 
by a commemoration like this, the local incidents of that most ter- 
rible war in which the lives of all that lived in the feeble settle- 
ments of Eastern Massachusetts, and of all New England, indeed, 
were in the utmost peril, and when all the preceding endeavors to 
plant on these wild shores the precious germs of American civiliza- 
tion were in danger of utter annihilation. Such was the peril of 
the ancestors of us all living here in 1676, two hundred years ago 
this very Monday morning. 

The object of tins historic festival then is of greater importance 
than die exhilaration which the occasion excites during these pass- 
ing exercises. Its true intent is to force our thoughts and sympa- 



49 

thies far back into the distant past, and impel us to look at the ter- 
rific condition of our forefathers and foremothers, and consider 
what it cost them to cross the mighty sea. to penetrate thai pathless 
wilderness then overspreading all these meadows, fields, and hills, 
and to risk the fearful perils that hovered around exposed and de- 
fenceless homes, read\- to be ravaged any day and any hour, by the 
torch and tomahawk of the relentless savage. 

Yet the courage of our ancestors, to endure and dare just such 
real perils as this celebration has so vividly revealed to us all to- 
day, was needed, in order to lay a foundation, deep and abiding, for 
the growth and culture of this beautiful village, in these later days, 
which you all love so well, and which it is the object of this com- 
memorative festival to make you and your children love more and 
more. 

The President. — I will next read the following sentiment : 

"The delegation representing the New England Historical and Genea- 
logical Society, — honored by their presence to-day, we would assure them 
of our lively interest in the aims of the Society which they represent, 
and of our cordial congratulations upon the increasing favor with which 
it is so generally regarded by the public." 

In the absence of Rev. Dr. Russell, of Holbrook, chairman 
of this delegation, I will call upon Mr. D. T. V. Huntoon, of 
Canton, to respond to this sentiment. 

REMARKS OF D. T. V. HUNTOOX. 

Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen : — 

We come here to-day to represent a society which has for the past 
thirty years been striving in every way to collect the mouldering 
documents which cumber the attics of the old houses of New 
England. Very little credit, perchance, we get for it. Uut once 
in a while there are those who are very glad indeed to come to us 
and ask us who were their great-grandfathers and great-grand 
mothers; and very often we can tell them. Such is the valui 
records. 

But, ladies and gentlemen, it is not alone the society which I 
represent to-day that has brought me to Medfield for the first time 
in my life ; but it is because I appreciate and love everything which 
relates to the history of New England. Above all, I lo 

7 



5° 

thing which pertains to dear old Norfolk County, where I was born. 
The gentleman from Sandwich has spoken to you of the Indians 
in his vicinity, — the Mashpee Indians. I was born upon a plantation 
where the friendly Indians once lived, the Ponkipog Plantation- 
The gentleman also alluded to the Apostle Eliot. He told you of 
his work upon the Cape. Allow me to say that just two hundred 
years ago, John Eliot petitioned the town of Dorchester to reserve 
six thousand acres of land for the benefit of the Indians, in order 
that they might worship God in peace. They reserved six thousand 
acres of land, which is now situated in the town of Canton, then 
Dorchester. Gookin calls it " The Second Praying Town." There, 
every fortnight, the good old man John Eliot came and held his 
meeting. There he taught them the use of the alphabet, and there 
he instructed many of them in the work of the ministry, and when 
he.died — this "Apostle to the Indians," as he is often called — his 
mantle fell upon our first minister, the Rev. Joseph Morse, who was 
a native of your town, and who, in the year 1707, came to our little 
settlement — our little township of perhaps twenty or thirty fami- 
lies, — and there ministered for some thirty years to the people of the 
old parish ; and in this work he was aided by his wife, Amity Morse, 
who opened a little school for the Indians, and taught them to read 
the Psalter and the New Testament. The days passed on, and still 
the Indians attended his little church. But when a larger and more 
pretentious edifice was erected, and the Rev. Samuel Dunbar was 
called to minister to the people of Stoughton, as the place then 
came to be called, the Indians said that they could not understand 
Mr. Dunbar. They knew of but one Indian who ever attended Mr. 
Dunbar's ministry, and he was now dead, — too much " Gospel- 
ization " ! 

These Ponkipog Indians were always friendly to the white settlers, 
and one' of their sachems lost his life in a battle with King Philip's 
men. There are none of unmixed blood remaining in my native 
town to-day. Half-breeds and quarter-breeds gain a precarious 
living by fishing, or picking cranberries in the bogs around Ponki- 
pog Pond ; but the aborigines of two centuries ago have departed, 
and forever. 

Permit me, Mr. President, in closing, to express the hope that 
the celebrating of such important anniversaries as the present will 
create a deeper interest in the historical associations which cluster 
around our own homes ; and I thank you, sir, in behalf of the New 
England Historical and Genealogical Society, for the " lively interest 



5 1 

in our aims." and -crdial congratulations " in our success, which 
you have so kindly expressed. 

The President. — In the eloquent address that we heard 
this morning, the town of Deerfield was spoken of as associ- 
ated in the devastation that resulted from King Philip's war. 
Deerfield was originally a part of Dedham, and so connected 
with Medfield. I had hoped to present to you a representa- 
tive from Deerfield ; hut, instead, I have to read to you a com- 
munication from him, and a sentiment he has sent which you 
will be pleased to hear. 

Deerfielo. Feb. [8, [876. 

Charles C. Sewall, J. M. R. Eat oil and others.— 

I have received your kind invitation to join with you in the second 
Centennial, commemorative of the burning of Medfield in 1676. I 
would gladly be with you, but reasons that seem imperative present 
themselves "as obstacles. I feel proud and grateful for having I 
selected as the representative of my dear old town, on this interesting 
occasion: and, in her behalf, would send greeting, with the following 

sentiment : — 

« Medfield and Deerfield, both fields of historic fame, united in the olden 
time, in a measure by a common ancestry, and more strongly by a kin- 
dred fate. — may they continue to be united by a common sentiment of 
tender veneration for' the fathers, and a grateful acknowledgment of what 
they did and suffered, that they might leave for us the glorious heritage 
around us and an honored name." 

I remain, gentlemen, very gratefully and respectfully yours, 

( rEO. Sheldon. 

The President. — I give you now : — 

"The cause of education, — dear alike to the past and the present 
generations, and long and eminently served by a family proud to own their 
nativity here." 

I will call upon Mr. Edward A. H. Allen, of Sherburne, to 
respond. 

RIM ARKS OF MR. EDWARD A. H. ALLEN. 

Mr. President: — 

The addresses of the morning and of the afternoon have all. with 
slight exception, fallen in with the prevalent feeling in Ne\N Eng 



52 

land, that the Indians are our natural enemies, and that it was our 
ancestors' duty not only to defend their land and homes from the 
savages, but to carry to them war and desolation. In another spirit, 
just two centuries ago, possibly at this very time of the year, was a 
small party of Indians going through the depths of the snow in the 
trackless forests near one of the Great Lakes, on a mission, I was 
about to say, of Christian piety. It was a mission of Christian 
piety ; for it was then, or just before, that the heroic young Catholic 
priest, Father Marquette — after his discovery of the Mississippi, and 
after teaching with such fidelity the converts to Christianity among 
the Western tribes — had fallen under the great duties and labors 
of his calling, and had died in the wilderness ; and that little band 
of Indians was seeking his last resting-place. They found it. 
They took up most tenderly the bones of him who had been their 
guide, their instructor, their Christian pastor, and bore them away 
to the white settlement, where they were afterward buried. 

Now the sentiment manifested by these Western converts corre- 
sponds with that shown by the Indians on the Cape. It was the re 
suit of the humane treatment received by them in a distant part of 
our land, and from another race, — the French ; and so, while we 
honor the character our ancestors bore, and the deeds they per- 
formed, we yet can unite with those of a different faith from most 
of us, in honoring also the devotion which the Jesuit Fathers gave 
to their work of converting the Indians in the West. The incident 
I have related occurred at the very time that these beautiful towns 
of dear New England were devastated by King Philip and his sav- 
age warriors. 

The President. — I give you now : — 

"The pastors of the churches of Medfield, — cherished in the affec- 
tions and the memories of those to whom they ministered, and of the 
whole community, whose most sacred interests they have labored to 
promote." 

I would call upon the Rev. Mr. Bush, one of the ex-pastors, 
to respond to this sentiment. 

REMARKS OF REV. S. W. BUSH. 

Mr President : — 

Our orator this morning (and I use the word "orator" with 
emphasis and meaning) gave to us a graphic picture of the 



heroism of Mr. Wilson, the first pastor of Medfield, detailing 
vividly the story of Ins courage on that memorable occasion, 

for which we now revere his memory, and I must confess that it 
appeared to me that it required almost as much courage in this late 
hour after listening for so long a period as this audience has listened 
to the varied speeches that have been made, so full of incident and 
story and graphic eloquence, — I say it seemed to me as if it required 
almost as much courage to face- an audience that had been put to so 
severe a test in point of time (though not in the way of dull 
speeches) as it did to face the Indians; but in my humble way 1 
must endeavor to do my part. 

The town of Medfield is very dear to me, associated as it is with 
some of the dearest and most sacred memories, as well as with 
some of the most endeared and lasting attachments of my life. I 
am also called at this time to speak especially of the early pastors 
of New England ; for 1 think there is no class of men to whom 
New England, in all that she is, in all that she has been, in all that 
she hopes for, there is no single class of men to which she is more 
indebted than to her early ministers. They were men of learning ; 
they were men of intellectual force ; they were men of high char u 
ter ; they were intellectual leaders as well as spiritual guides. And 
the graphic story which our orator told us this morning, of Mr. Wil- 
son and his deeds in that way, is only one illustration of this truth. 
It applies to the town of Medfield ; but if you will consult the early 
annals of New England, you will find all through them, in the his- 
tory of the early times, that New England ministers were men who 
loved their labors, and left their mark, not only upon the time in 
which they lived, but upon the future institutions and the future 
history of the country. 

Macaulay, if you remember, in one of those brilliant and inimitable 
essays of his, with that graphic delineation in which scarcely any 
English writer is his equal, draws a picture of the Puritan as he ap- 
peared externally, — gaunt, forbidding perhaps; though underneath 
all this quaintness and coldness and apparent severity was the germ 
of that character which made New England what it was. — or which 
at least impressed itself to a very great extent upon the colonies 
after the death of Charles I. And so. also, we may say of the 
early ministers of New England, that they left their impress on 
the 'history of the present age, as well as on that of the age in 
which they lived. Now Mr. Wilson, the first minister of .Medfield. 
as I say, was simply an illustration of that class ol men. And I 



54 

think we may say also that their successors have been men of char- 
acter, or at least have left some influence on " the town." And as 
Mr. Hyde, in his remarks, spoke to you of that one feature, you 
remember that De Tocqueville, in his book on America — (I suppose 
the best book that ever was written on this country ; certainly one 
in which the characteristics of our institutions are best delineated, 
and one in which we see the nicety and discrimination and analysis 
and generalization of the philosopher), — De Tocqueville says that 
the corner-stone of American democracy is its municipal govern- 
ment, — its township organization. 

Now if you will read the early annals of New England, you will 
find that it was the ministers of New England that did very much 
toward giving direction and shaping to the town, and the mould- 
ing of institutions out of which sprang, not only New England, 
but out of which has sprung all that is vital in American democ- 
racy and in American society. 

I do not claim too much for the early pastors of New England 
when I say they constituted the greatest and most vital intellectual 
and moral force that was present in those days for the shaping of 
American institutions and American society. But this theme is too 
comprehensive to form the mere subject of a speech when the hour 
is so near at hand when we shall be compelled to bring these 
exercises to a close. I can only say that it has given me great 
pleasure to be here to-day. I will not occupy your time farther 
except to say that, if there is any class of men in this country or in 
the world that I reverence, it is the early ministers of New England. 

And now you know it was the custom of those old ministers, 
after they had gone through their discourses, with their " thirdly, 
fourthly, and fifthly," up to " twentiethly," to make an application. 
In imitation, therefore, of them, I will just make a brief application 
of my subject. It is one of the most sacred things that we can do to 
commemorate the past. I never fail, whenever I meet with such an 
occasion as this to commemorate the past, to have the feeling that 
the highest and best way in which we can commemorate the virtues 
of our ancestors and the memory of our fathers is not simply to 
praise them, and recount their deeds and brilliant services. A 
higher commemoration is when we imitate their virtues. We praise 
them for their fidelity to truth, to honor, and to God ; but we give 
them a higher praise when, imitating their example and influenced 
by their spirit, we are alike faithful in our day. 

Dr. Howe tells us, in his "Greek Revolution," of an incident 



55 

which I have repeated elsewhere, but perhaps not mam- of you 
have heard it, that a Greek chief, during thai great struggle for 
independence, at the siege of Athens was wounded even unto death ; 
and there before that city, as the fight was going on, he lay, a 
dying soldier in the last gasp of life. An English nobleman 
who had seen his bravery and his heroism began to compliment 
him on his deeds ; and he, summoning as it were the strength which 
came from the dying hour, waved his hand to this English noble- 
man, and said, "What has been has been. What has happened 
has happened. Now for the future." That is a good sentiment for 
us to remember to-day. While, then, we commemorate the virtues 
of the past, let us be faithful to the present, and see that we so live 
that the future shall be the better for our having lived. 

A letter was then read from the Rev. Rusiitox D. Burr, 
another of the ex-pastors of Medfield : — 

Yonkers, N. Y.. Feb. 17. [876. 

Rev. Chas. C. Sewall, Chairman of Committee of Arrangements, etc.: — 

Dear Sir, — I thank you heartily for the invitation to be present at 
the second Centennial of the burning of your town by the Indians, but it 
is quite impossible for me to lie with you but in spirit. In thinking of 
the descent of the Indians upon Medfield, my thoughts revert chiefly to 
the stout-heartedness of your forefathers, and your foremothers, too — 
why not ? for the mothers suffered, certainly no less than the fathers 
in these old times: — to their fearful sufferings and their daily privations 
of every kind, for their own sake and of those who should come after 
them; and so, not so much would I wish to keep in mind the Indians' 
share of the horrid work, as the courage which could he willing to put 
oneself in the way of such things, for the sacredness of homes, the wel- 
fare of man, and the glory of God. 

Keeping in mind the devastations of that day — two hundred years 
ago — will only he worth your time and means as it shall stimulate you 
all to be like those old. sturdy, colonial men and women that laid the 
foundation of the glory of your good old State, cementing all the stones 
of it with the love of sound learning and the favor of Almighty God. 

Coming down from 1676 one hundred years, you have much to think 
of in connection with the war of the Revolution; and about one hundred 
years later you did your duty in helping to put down the Rebellion. Ma) 
the sons and daughters of Medfield never he false to their share of any 
work, which it may fall to them to lie engaged in. 

Yours sincerely and always, 

RUSHTON I). BURR. 



The President. — I will read the fallowing as the last sen- 
timent which I shall give you on this occasion : — 

"The press, — the guardian of the public interests, and source of 
public intelligence : may it never be less vigilant, nor long have cause to 
communicate intelligence which shall spread alarm and anxiety through 
the community." 

There being no further sentiments or addresses, the exer- 
cises were closed with prayer and the benediction by Rev. Mr. 
Crane, of Medfield. 



Names of slain and mortally wounded by the Indians, February 21, 
1675, O.S.: 

John Fussell, slain Feb. 21, 1675. 
Henry Adams, slain Feb. 21, 1675. 
John Bowers, Sen., slain Feb. 21, 1675. 
John Bowers, Jr., slain Feb. 21, 1675. 

Margaret and Samuel Thurston, mortally wounded and died Feb. 25, 
1675. 
Thomas Mason, Sen., slain Feb. 21, 1675. 
Thomas Mason, son of above, slain Feb. 21, 1675. 
Zachary Mason, son of above, slain Feb. 21, 1675. 
William Williams, soldier from Boston, slain Feb. 21, 1675. 
John Cooper, soldier from Boston, slain Feb. 21, 1675. 
Edward Jackson, soldier from Cambridge, slain Feb. 21, 1675. 
Jonathan Wood, slain Feb. 21, 1675. 
Daniel Clark, mortally wounded, and died April 7, 1676. 
Elizaukth Smith, slain Feb. 21, 1675. 
Timothy Dwight, mortally wounded, died March 9, 1676. 












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